May is Better Hearing & Speech Month and a great time to highlight some of the lesser known skills and areas of development addressed by Speech Language Pathologists.

Many people have the perception that speech therapy is a therapist and student sitting at a table as the therapist shows her student pictures and demonstrates proper production of the "r" sound. Some people are surprised to hear that we work on much more than a child's mispronunciations. Did you know that Speech Language Pathologists (SLP's) are educated and trained to evaluate, diagnose, and treat challenges in the following areas?

Literacy: Speech Language Pathologists are trained to analyze children’s strengths and weaknesses at word, sentence, and discourse levels. How a child listens to and understands language and how he speaks provides the foundation for the development of reading and writing.

Cognitive-communication:Cognitive-communication abilities or our "executive function," are the thought processes that allow us to function successfully and interact meaningfully with each other. It's how well our minds are working. Examples of the processes that make up cognitive-communication include: attention, memory, problem solving, and organization.

A child can struggle in school if he has trouble carrying out organized steps to successfully complete a task. A SLP often works with a student's cognitive communication to improve writing skills, for example, by helping them learn to organize their thoughts, initiate writing assignments, expand their ideas, evaluate and edit their writing, and meet the requirements of the assignment. ​

Social Skills and Understanding Social Cues: Social communication, or pragmatics, refers to how we communicate within social contexts. It includes the ability to use language for different purposes (to greet others, to make a demand, to request), the ability to adapt language to meet the needs of the listener or situation, and following the often “unspoken” rules of conversation and storytelling, including taking turns in conversations, looking at the speaker, standing at an appropriate distance from the speaker, and using facial expressions and gestures.

​A SLP can help a child who may be having difficulty making friends or interacting with others by directly teaching these social skills.

Feeding and swallowing:The anatomy used to produce sound and speech are similarly used to suck, chew, and swallow food and liquid. SLP's have a specific understanding of the anatomy and physiology of oral, pharyngeal and laryngeal structures as well as the respiratory system to be able to evaluate and treat difficulty with feeding and swallowing.

​A SLP can help if your child may be demonstrating some of the following signs of feeding and swallowing difficulties:

Arches her back or stiffens when feeding

Cries or fusses when feeding

Has problems breast feeding

Falls asleep during feeding

Has trouble breathing while eating and drinking

Refuses to eat or drink

Eats only certain textures, such as soft food or crunchy food

Takes a long time to eat

Has problems chewing

Coughs or gags during meals

Drools a lot or has liquid come out her mouth or nose

Spits up or throws up a lot

Is not gaining weight or growing​​

Voice: Vocal quality, pitch, loudness and respiration all play a role in producing a strong, healthy voice. The inability to use one's voice effectively can negatively impact a child's relationships and interactions.

The goal of voice therapy is to help build and maintain a strong, clear, healthy voice that meets social and vocal demands.

These are just a few of the many skills and areas of development that speech therapy may address. One of the reasons I was drawn to this career was that I knew I would never be bored! It's a wonderful profession that allows me to utilize my creativity and problem solving and enables me to constantly learn new skills! Contact Connections Speech Therapy today if you have questions about these areas or any aspect of your child's speech and language development!

I have a friend whose son has a speech problem. She cannot accept that her son is talking like that and so upset. I will be sharing this information with her for a clearer understanding of what is SLP is all about. This article will definitely help her a lot, I am sure of that, thanks!

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My name is Katherine Hindman. I have been a speech therapist for over 20 years and truly love what I do!